Genshin Impact's free 5-star selector, To Temper Thyself and Journey Far, will begin its fifth cycle on August 10, loosely coinciding with the expected release date of update 7.0 and the Snezhnaya region. The milestone, tucked away in the game's new event timeline, is significant, as it marks the end of the giveaway's four-part debut cycle and could open it up to changes including new characters being added into the rotation.
To Temper Thyself and Journey Far lets Genshin Impact players obtain free Constellations for 5-star characters they already own by repeatedly completing in-game tasks. Each cycle is 12 weeks long, and you have to log eight completed weeks in that time to earn a Constellation (among other rewards), completing at least five days of tasks each week.
The other catch is that you can't redeem the same character multiple times to stack up Constellations. Most people use the event to take a character with no Constellations to "C1," unlocking the first passive ability normally acquired by pulling duplicates of that character. But if you had a character at C1, you could also use a freebie to upgrade them to C2, and so on.
With the next cycle of To Temper Thyself and Journey Far beginning, players will seemingly be able to claim another four free Constellations in the year ahead. The question is whether the selection of characters will be updated in the Snezhnaya era – either expanded, with more characters becoming redeemable, or edited, with some characters rotating out.
Many players have expressed hopes that more and better characters will be added to this event following Snezhnaya's release. Yumemizuki Mizuki is a notable absentee as the only standard-banner character not available, though she is included in the dedicated standard 5-star selector that comes around with Genshin Impact's anniversary.
The timing of the event could leave the door open to more Sumeru or even some Fontaine-era characters becoming available, though I wouldn't expect the strongest of the lot to be given free Constellations like this. As one of the 11 people who pulled Chiori and Emilie, I don't think adding them to the list would be a threat to characters like Zibai or Nefer.
The original roster mostly consisted of old and outdated characters, like Kamisato Ayato and Eula, but some found new life with free Constellations. A C1 Shenhe is a more compelling teammate for the meta-relevant Cryo DPS Skirk, and a C1 Hu Tao isn't an unreasonable Pyro partner for modern support character packages like Columbina and Ineffa.
The value of the characters in the event has changed in the past year, which has seen the power level of new characters rise considerably alongside buffs to older units. For example, recent changes to Yae Miko have made her probably the best C1 pick in the entire game for her synergy with the Stellar Conduct reaction which much of the Snezhnaya cast will evidently be built around. Cyno, another Stellar Conduct target, is in a similar position. Likewise, characters like Albedo and Klee benefited from buffs to units with the Hexerei faction tag, making their early Constellations more appealing.
